How To Video: Amazon Silk browser tips

How To Video: Amazon Silk browser tips

2:12 /
5 August 2014

Uncover the best of the Fire Phone's default browser with these helpful tips.

[MUSIC]
The Amazon Fire Silk browser has a lot more power than any other normal stock Android browser.
So here are a few ways to take advantage of Silk's best features.
First, start by customizing the Omni Bar.
By default, the browser uses Bing for searches.
But if you prefer a different search engine, like Google or Yahoo, you can change that.
Just head to the left sidebar, then Settings and then Search Engine, to make a choice.
One of the more useful built-in features here, is save pages.
If you don't have time to read an article, you can save it, by hitting the menu button, and choosing save page.
Not only will this bookmark it for later, but, it will even be available offline.
Which is great for those internet-free commutes.
When you're ready to read a saved article, just head to saved pages in the sidebar and there it is.
Like most mobile browsers, silk let's you use tabs so you can launch and browse a bunch of pages at once.
Except in silk, they're really more like windows.
To view all your windows, tap this icon here.
In this overview, you can of course navigate to a different window, plus you can manage whatever you have open to quickly close all windows, long press any page and tab close all tab and you have a few other options like close other tabs.
And finally there are a lot of settings to play with, but pay attention to a couple options that can minimize your data usage.
Like instant page load.
It uses a little bit extra data to pre-load webpages based on where Silk thinks you're going next.
So if you wanna cut down on data, disable that option.
And if you're really concerned about data go to the Advanced Settings and turn Load Images off.
You'll use fewer megabytes, plus your pages will load a lot faster.
So those are just a few tips to help you get.
It started with silk.
But if you have any questions, or tips of your own, hit me up on Twitter.
And check out www.cnet.com/how-to for more tips like this.
For c\net, I'm Sharon Profis.